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Nobody has really jumped to that conclusion. I don't think the author of this article has represented Loeb's views or public statements entirely fairly.

Sean Carroll recently interviewed him and if you listen to that, I think you will come away with a very different idea of who Loeb is and what he is saying.

Oumuamua changed velocity in an unexplained way. This was not expected, but there is an explanation that the object is outgassing and it increases it's velocity.

This, along with strange shape made the object interesting for ET speculation.

Hasn't the outgassing theory been dismissed because there is no sign of it?

No, from what I read the theory is that Oumuamua had only frozen hydrogen/gases so the outgassing couldn't be observed as the object was small.

If it comes flying in on an asteroid sized spaceship...what’s the difference?

"Asteroid-sized" in this case isn't all that big- 100m long is a similar size to the ISS, though it probably masses a lot more.

I suppose that we could imagine any kind of nonsense. We call that fiction not science.

Spaceship or Gods poo makes a difference i think ;)